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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22473763">Dibs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter'>crossingwinter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chicago Winter Parking Dibs, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Midwest is Best</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:54:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22473763</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben dibses the parking spot after it snows.  If he’s going to spend almost an hour shoveling his car out of the snow, he gets to park his car there later.  </p><p>Too bad one of his neighbors thinks dibsing is unethical and keeps thwarting his parking plans.</p><p> </p><p>  <strong><em>Dibs</em>: A Chicago Winter Parking Enemies To Lovers AU.</strong></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>252</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange, Winter Gems 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dibs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/tmwillson3/gifts">tmwillson3</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Teresa!  Here have a silly modern AU ♡</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Someone moved his fucking chair.</p><p>He’s going to commit murder.</p><p>He really is.</p><p>The chair is sitting on the sidewalk, nice and innocent and--yeah.  Yeah it looks like someone taped a note to it.  </p><p>Which he’s never going to read.  Because he can’t fucking find a parking spot.</p><p>**</p><p>
  <em> Dear neighbor, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Dibs is unethical.  I understand that you think that you have a right to this parking space but you don’t.  These are community streets. They belong to all of us. Thank you for doing your part shoveling the snow out. </em>
</p><p>He doesn’t fucking read the rest.  He balls it up and hurls it at a window.  It’s not as gratifying as he wants it to be.</p><p>He’s walked through badly shoveled neighborhood streets for the past twenty minutes, after spending another <em> thirty </em> trying to park.  He was supposed to have been home an hour ago.  He doesn’t need a sanctimonious fucking <em> dear neighbor </em>written by some prissy asshole who thinks they know jack shit.  </p><p>Whoever this is had better never meet him again.</p><p>Or else they’d better meet him in the fucking pit.</p><p>**</p><p>It snows two days later.</p><p>Because of course it fucking does.</p><p>Fucking Chicago.</p><p><em> The summers there are so lovely, </em> they’d said.  <em> The cost of living compared to your salary is a good deal, </em>they’d said.</p><p>Fuck this.</p><p>He spends half of his winters shoveling snow away from his fucking car.</p><p>Yes, he’s gonna put his fucking chair down.  And this time, he tapes a note to it.</p><p>
  <em> Dear neighbor, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Go fuck yourself.   </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Or at least shovel my fucking car out of the snow. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Don’t move my chair again. </em>
</p><p>**</p><p>She doesn’t move his chair again.  He knows this because when he gets back from work, he finds her sitting in it.</p><p>He shouldn’t be surprised that the note-writer is a she.  The handwriting really gave that away. She’s wearing a tan parka, hood up, and her long hair draping down to her shoulders.  She’s on her phone, scrolling through whatever it is people do on their phones.  </p><p>He wonders how long she’s been sitting there.</p><p>He rolls down his window.</p><p>“Hi,” he says.</p><p>“No, you can’t have the parking spot,” she says without even looking up from her phone.</p><p>“But it’s my parking spot?”</p><p>“You’re the dibs-er?”</p><p>“I am.”</p><p>She looks up from her phone and he registers two things: the first is that her eyes are this intriguing hazel color--a little green, a little brown, and he’s sure it shifts depending on the light; the second is that he’s never seen anyone look at him with quite that much condescending disgust in his whole life.  “Wow. It must suck to feel that entitled.”</p><p>“Says the woman sitting in <em> my </em> chair,” he grits out.</p><p>“For the past two hours.  No one else was using it.”</p><p>“Some of us work for a living.”</p><p>“I work for a living,” the woman replies easily.</p><p>“Then why the fuck are you sitting in my chair for the past two hours?”</p><p>“Because I work seven to three,” she says with a wide smile.  “And this may be your chair, but it’s not your parking spot. We can discuss once you’ve parked.”</p><p>“Or we can discuss it now.”</p><p>“You can try,” she replies and she looks back down at her phone.  “I’m gonna keep grading papers though.”</p><p>“On your phone?” he snorts.  Doesn’t paper grading require a red pen?</p><p>“There’s this beautiful thing called the internet, which my students use to submit their papers for grades.  I also can mark up their papers online and get them notes directly from my phone. Isn’t technology wonderful?”  She beams at him and there’s this angry blaze to her eyes that screams <em> don’t fuck with me </em> that must go miles in a classroom.</p><p>And it fucking works on him too.</p><p>**</p><p>An hour later, he still finds her sitting in his chair.  It’s pitch black outside, and a scarf has materialized to cover the lower half of her face.  She has one of those external battery packs plugged into her phone like those nerds who still play <em> Pokemon Go </em>--probably because the cold is killing her battery but she’s too fucking stubborn to just go inside and let him have his fucking parking space.</p><p>“Can I have my chair back?” he asks her.</p><p>She looks up at last.  “Dibs is unethical,” she says.</p><p>“Yeah, I got your fucking note.”</p><p>“And I’m glad to know it left an impact,” she replies dryly.</p><p>“Nothing if not resistant to any and all attempts to tame me,” he retorts.</p><p>She arches an eyebrow and it really shouldn’t affect him the way it does.  He swallows. He swallows again.</p><p>“Listen,” she says.  “I can do this all day.”</p><p>“It’s my fucking chair.”</p><p>“It’s one of the ricketiest things I’ve ever sat in.  Do you use it for anything other than dibs?”</p><p>“That’s none of your business.”</p><p>“Perhaps not,” she says, her nose flaring.  “But this is a public space and you’re claiming it as private.  This isn’t something you’re entitled to. This isn’t—”</p><p>“Do you even own a fucking car?”</p><p>She raises her eyebrows again and he needs to stop noticing things.  He can’t even see the bottom of her face because it’s wrapped in a scarf.  He can’t go fixating on her fucking eyebrows. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”</p><p>“It’s relevant because you don’t know how long it takes to shovel snow in the morning.  You don’t know how long it takes to get your car out of a spot if you haven’t shoveled it right.  You don’t know how hard it is to find parking—”</p><p>“Then you shouldn’t own a car,” she cuts in, “if you’re not willing to shoulder the responsibility of what owning one in winter in Chicago means.”</p><p>“And you shouldn’t try to educate people on something you have no experience with,” he replies.  “I’m not your student. You don’t get to lecture me. My tax dollars pay your salary and it’s my fucking parking spot you’re holding hostage.”</p><p>Somehow he gets the sense he shouldn’t have brought up her salary.  Because the phrase <em> if looks could kill </em> crosses his mind.</p><p>“Your taxes pay my salary, do they?” she asks and he’s never been more frightened in his life and he’s more than a little alarmed at the way his dick stirs in his pants.</p><p>“Listen,” Ben begins but she cuts him off. </p><p>“Want to talk about how it required days worth of strikes to even remotely get students the resources they need, before we even talk about salary?  You work in business?” He swallows. She takes that as the yes it is. “Tell me something, if one of the branches of your business were so underfunded that it could barely provide the output you needed of it, you’d probably want to revisit the budget right?  Maybe figure out what more should go into making it successful, rather than cutting and cutting and cutting? And you should <em> probably </em> listen to your employees on the ground about what their lived experience in the position is, rather than just making shit up as you go because sure, you may have a background in one part of your business, but that hardly makes you an expert on all parts of it.  You know <em> nothing </em> about education and the needs of schools just because you went to one twenty years ago.  Oh, and I can grade papers on my phone now.”</p><p>Ben doesn’t know what to say to that.  He’s aware that he’s just standing there, silently unable to form words in the darkness.  It’s starting to snow again because of fucking course it is.</p><p>“Can I have my chair back?” he asks at last.</p><p>She stands at once.</p><p>“Yeah, you can have your fucking chair back,” she replies.  “Dibs is unethical. You don’t get to dibs anymore.”</p><p>And she storms off.</p><p>**</p><p>Yeah.  He dibs his parking spot again the next time it snows.  </p><p>He’s not a coward.  He also wonders if she’ll actually sit in his chair again this time.  It’s a weird game of chicken. Or frozen chicken because not only is it snowy and horrible outside today, the temperature drops drastically in the afternoon which makes him <em> really </em> hope she’s not sitting outside waiting for him for two hours after classes end.</p><p>
  <span>But she is when he drives back to his parking spot.  She’s on her phone again, and he sees a second scarf, and also a hat under her hood.  God she really is that self-righteous, isn’t she? Because she sure as hell couldn’t possibly want to see him again after the last time, could she?  He hopes she’s got leggings on under her jeans.</span>
</p><p>“Listen,” he says, rolling down his window as he pulls up next to her.  “Let me park. It’s cold outside.”</p><p>“This is why god made fleece,” she says.  Her teeth are chattering.</p><p>“God didn’t make fleece.  A machine made fleece. And you’re gonna get hypothermia.  Let me park.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>He can’t tell if he’s impressed with her stubbornness or if he thinks she’s the biggest moron on this icy earth.  </p><p>He supposes he’s done stupider things on principle.</p><p>Granted his principle was <em> my parents are treating me like shit </em> and not <em> some stranger is dibsing a parking spot the way half of Chicago does all winter </em>.  </p><p>He sighs, rolls up the window and goes to find another parking spot. </p><p>To his immense shock, he finds one two streets over.  It’s not even dibsed. He pulls into it easily and locks his car and good fucking god it’s cold outside.  Fuck he’s not wearing the right coat to walk three blocks.</p><p>He passes a Starbucks crossing one of the bigger streets on his way home and makes the snap decision to grab a warm beverage--any warm beverage--to hold.</p><p>But for some reason, when he gets to the cashier to order, he orders two of them.</p><p>**</p><p>“Here,” he says, shoving the hot chocolate at her.</p><p>She stares at it blankly.</p><p>“Are you trying to poison me?”</p><p>“I figured if you were choosing to get hypothermia instead of letting me park, the least I could do was get you some hot chocolate for that frozen road to hell.”</p><p>She stares at it, then at him, then at it.</p><p>“Is it even still warm?” she asks him.</p><p>“They put it in three cups.  Mine’s not scalding anymore but I also drank it on the way here.”  She stares at it. “The longer you stare at it, the more likely it is to turn into a block of frozen chocolate.”</p><p>“I don’t think hot chocolate can freeze.”</p><p>“If wine can freeze, hot chocolate can freeze.”</p><p>“Are you a scientist?”</p><p>“You’re the one grading papers.  Or do they assign papers in chemistry these days?”</p><p>She glares at him, but takes the hot chocolate.  She takes a sip. Her lips are chapped, but he likes the shape of them.  Because of course he likes the shape of them.</p><p>“Thanks,” she mutters.  “This is nice; dibs is still unethical.”</p><p>“You must be one hell of a teacher.”</p><p>“You must be one hell of a businessman.”</p><p>“I’m not a businessman,” he replies.  “I work in for profit, but I’m in product development.  Couldn’t make a business deal to save my life, as you might have noticed.”</p><p>“Might have noticed?” she asks, her eyebrows disappearing under that hat she’s wearing under her hood.</p><p>“I’m terrible at convincing you to get out of my chair and out of my dibs spot.  If I worked in the business side of business, I’d probably be better at that.”</p><p>She snorts.  “Am I to take it this means you’re conceding defeat and not dibsing anymore?”</p><p>He looks at her.  She looks at him. And takes a sip of the hot chocolate he’d brought her.  He swallows.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>He’s never going to forgive his parents and his uncle for instilling in him that desperate need to have someone who dislikes him approve of him.  Because good fucking god, he wants her approval.  </p><p>Or maybe he just wants to see if her lips taste like chocolate right now.</p><p>Wait--is he imagining it or did her eyes drop briefly to his lips too?  </p><p>She gets to her feet and takes another sip of the hot chocolate.  “You’re doing the right thing for the city,” she tells him, handing him that rickety dibs chair.  Her voice is suddenly soft. Confusingly soft.</p><p>Her breath is puffing in little white clouds of heat in front of her face.  </p><p>“What’s your name?” he blurts out.</p><p>“I’m Rey.”</p><p>“Ben.”</p><p>“Nice to meet you, Ben,” she says and she turns towards the sidewalk.  He follows her. Neither of them is particularly elegant, stepping over the wall of snow between the parking spot and the sidewalk, but they get there in the end.  </p><p>They stand there for a moment, as if unsure what to say to one another.  Are they going home? Are they arguing? Are they going to keep staring at one another’s lips?</p><p>“Can I buy you dinner?” Ben asks and Rey blinks at him.  Ok that might not have been the correct option. But he keeps going because god knows he never learned when to stop.  He just wants to hold her hand. Is that dumb?</p><p>“Italian?” she asks, and somehow he’s not surprised that she’d both wanted to pick and had been thinking that cheesy tomatoey carbs was exactly what the cold merited too.</p><p>“Sounds perfect.”</p>
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